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Thursday, 1 January 2015

2015: THE YEAR THAT LIBRARIES DIED?

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is proved by the awful headlines
splashed across the newsdaily – but the terrible bleeding away of the public and
school library services seems to be almost invisible.

There’s no gory red stuff
on show, no heart-rending images to display, so even as financial axes have
been slashing and cutting - and are now being freshly re-sharpened, there’s
little response in the news media.

Library cuts don’t make for sustained headlines or passionate
press campaigns. Eventhe reports on cuts
to Birmingham’s
showcase library – the one that was supposed to be the glory of that
authority’s much pruned provision - had a world-weary touch of “what else did you expect?”

In honour of the Great Austerity, central government cut all
regional funding so steeply that councils have little money to support essential
services. However, because the funds are now in regional and local hands, the
government can raise its political eyebrows and say it’s not their fault when those
cuts hit home. With community centres, care of the elderly and more being
hacked away, the idea of a library service comes across as almost luxurious. Books rather than bedpans? Pages of text rather than playful toddlers? You elistist!

There have already been cuts and casualties: the closure of
324 libraries, the handing over of 400 more to volunteers, and the loss of
6,000 staff jobs since 2011 - and probably many more. Statistics have a way of
being out of date by the time they appear. However, the cuts planned for 2015 –
possibly concealed by both the noise and the silence leading up to the election
– will be truly severe.

Furthermore, librarians are not, I heard elsewhere, allowed
to comment on the matter. Most I know are desperate to keep their library
services running in a positive way - but how hard to do that against the onslaughts of
rationalisation; hours reduced means usage reduced means less need. Isn't that how it works?:

Visiting my local library, in the centre of a prosperous conference
town, as well as the “middle class readers”, I see elderly people on their own,
families with young children, students working at the few tables, newly arrived
immigrants and more: people to whom the library service is essential.

Lucy Mangan, writing recently in the Guardian, mentioned the Independent Library report that Ed Vaisey
– not a name trusted by many – commissioned a couple of years ago. He asked William
Seighart to investigate the current state and possible future of libraries.
According to this report, 35% of people in England use their local libraries,
rising to 50% among poorer and immigrant groups.. The report points out that “The [socioeconomic] AB group, who run the
country and the media, don’t use libraries. They do not understand how vital
they are, or how many social problems they deal with.”

Hooray for Lucy for even writing about libraries, though she
suggests a far more optimistic picture of the future library service than I’m
witnessing. Meanwhile, too many of the
pitilessly bright political and media folk seem to be giving a cultural shrug, happy
to disregard the damage being done to the libraries. After all, there’s still the London
Library isn’t there? And everyone has wikipedia on the computer at home, don’t
they? Or is there, somewhere, a belief that stripping the library service of
its assets until it is unsustainable is a valid thing to do? Or is this another version of “the poor
don’t deserve libraries” attitude of the past? What do you think of that,
Andrew Carnegie?

Of course, damage isn’t called damage. It is presented as a
“new model”, given a fresh positive spin. Here in North
Yorkshire, people are being “consulted” about new library service
proposals, because by 2020 this County Council’s library budget will be half
what it was in 2010. How about where you live?

I, being lucky, live near what is proposed as the “core”
library for my district. (Less lucky are the many library staff losing their
jobs under these proposals.) There will be one core in each of the seven
districts of this large and often rural county, acting as an “engine”; advising
the remaining libraries, says the document.

What “remaining libraries”? Five “hybrid” libraries will
remain in towns where there are large and busy daytime populations. Each will
have access to a librarian but be run by volunteers. Will the librarian be based at the library? Not necessarily. Is this
one of the now very few librarians back at the core? Yes.

The rest will remain, but not as we know them. They will be
become twenty “community libraries”, where not only the running but the cost of
maintaining the building will fall on the local users and fund-raisers and
these will be staffed by volunteers. Not surprisingly, these smaller libraries are mostly in
rural and poorer areas of the county.

In addition, everyone who fills in the form is asked to tick the
“volunteer” box, because that is how libraries will be run in the future. I have to say that, looking ahead, my heart sinks.
Volunteers are good-hearted, capable people, eager to help when it doesn’t
inconvenience them or interfere with the other, very real demands on their
time. How will the leadership & structure work out among these often
strong-minded people? Who will tell who what to do once the librarians have
gone? Where will the responsibility lie? What about the maintenance of these
community buildings a few years on? And who will cough up the money for
replenishing book stock – a subject that is hardly mentioned in all the
proposals? (Reduce stock, reduce use, reduce “need: that useful model again.)

This is my example, but I know the same is happening all across England and Wales. Truly, I fear that once the
dynamic central expertise has disappeared, the whole library system will be so
weakened it will fade.

Of course, then it will cease to be a bother. Proof again,
no doubt, that the people just do not deserve libraries. Besides, as many young
people probably won’t have had librarians or libraries in their schools, they
won’t feel the loss anyway. Job done, eh? Spit spot.

Oh dear. 2015, what bodies will you bring? Maybe if there
was blood on the carpet, the media would notice. Where’s Professor Plum with
the hammer when you need him?

8 comments:

I'd heard things were going badly for libraries in the UK, but this really brings it home. Our public libraries are run by local councils, so it's unlikely that the federal government will have a direct say in closing them down, but if cuts are made to State income, it's all too easy to take them from libraries, isn't it? And local libraries now have self checkout, which will sooner or later lead to staff cuts. How can you possibly run a library with volunteers? It's a skilled job for professionals and paraprofessionals.

But we're having dreadful cuts in school libraries here. The teacher librarian is a dying species. The Principal who needs to make cuts invariably starts with the library. It's easiest. My own school, which has four small campuses, has closed the senior campus library, emptied it of books(most of them thrown out, before which around a thousand were used for a bizarre maths activity called a book igloo!), thrown out the TL and then called the empty space a "Learning Centre". The idea is, "They can look it all up online, can't they?" I have a book club on my campus, which is for Year 7-10. My members going on to the senior campus were horrified when I told them there would be no library where they were going.The college principal is a former maths teacher. What do you expect?

Excellent post, Penny.Sue, this is all part of what's going on in the UK, with our (insert vilest term you can think of) Tory government. Cut back a service until it isn't/can't be used - then say it's unecessary and sell it cheap to your big business friends (who will doubtless make you a 'consultant' or 'director'.)People will then have to pay through the nose for an essential service which was formerly free - and the service will be less efficient and of lower quality than before.No doubt there are plans for private companies to step in and take over libraries - we'll hear about them in due time and be told what a wonderful idea it is.

Yes, Tory governments certainly start this stuff, because money is all they can think of. We have an equally vile one running the country; the new Social Services Minister, whose previous job was bashing up refugees, has now been told to give the economy priority in his new job. So his next victims will be pensioners and disabled. But don't think the Labour government that follows will fix things. From sad experience, I know that once a system is broken, it doesn't get fixed. And anything privatised stays privatised.

About the only thing that might help - only might - is getting a huge selling author to be interviewed and embarrass the bastards. We're talking the likes of J.K here. I know a lot of writers have taken part in protests and that won't hurt, but you need more. Good luck!

Great post - thank you. Although you concentrate on England and Wales I am sad to report that it's starting to happen here in Scotland too. It's so short-sighted in terms of having an educated and informed population, and helps remove another factor boosting the quality of life of those with little money. As Sieghart says, those running the country don't use libraries and I think they are incapable of empathising with those who do.

It IS a totally grim state of affairs! Even writing this post made me feel quite ill, as if all the old moral certainties and values are being sluiced away, as Sue Price says, so that the service can be sold on to the lowest possible provider - see, I spat there when I wrote that word!

I couldn't even start on the the wretched school library situation in this post Sue B. What a nasty piece of work that head teacher sounds. There seems to be such ignorance from those in power down with you as well as up here - especially from those who get their documents & information & research handed to them by teams of assistants. They only ever see fully-stocked, all-staff-present, swept-clean libraries on their visits, rarely the real state of affairs - or those who use do use and need the libraries.

So sorry to hear that there are cuts in Scotland too, Anabel - a place I've long envied for its practical and benevolent library & literary example. (In fact - and apologies for my error - the Library Report only includes England, but I fear that Wales may be suffering too.

Great post, Penny. It is truly awful what local government is being forced to do while the Tories bang on self-righteously about doing what's necessary, and, as Sue says, lining up their mates to run things for profit.

Another stupid thing is that they can't plan beyond the next few months, because they don't know what money they're going to have. How on earth can a system run by volunteers work in the long term? Thanks for a depressing but accurate round-up, Penny.